Bitcoin News and Finance: What You Need to Know

A social media giant that significantly impacted South Korea’s internet influence in the early 2000s is set to take a second breath. The company plans to regain its popularity by launching a new cryptocurrency. New Ownership Reportedly Got Over $7 Million From Investors to Rebrand Cyworld According to Hanguk Kyungjae , Cyworld is paving the ground to relaunch its business under new ownership. The consortium of five domestic companies includes SKY E&M, a local entertainment company. The negotiation wasn’t a million-dollar transaction. In fact, the consortium bought Cyworld from its troubled former owner for $897,000 — the same amount owed to Cyworld’s employees at the time of the acquisition. The consortium has now revealed its plans to rebrand the firm as “Cyworld Z,” including the issuance of an Ethereum-based token, Dotori (Acorn). The new management expects the crypto can be listed on “one of the country’s (South Korea) top three crypto exchanges.” Moreover, Hanguk Kyungja...

Guggenheim Global Chief Investment Officer Scott Minerd has increased his bitcoin fair value estimate. He now says that the price of the cryptocurrency could reach $600K based on his firm’s fundamental research. Guggenheim’s SEC filing to invest half a billion dollars in bitcoin became effective early this week. Guggenheim’s Scott Minerd Says Bitcoin’s Price Could Reach $600K The chief investment officer (CIO) of Guggenheim Partners, Scott Minerd, talked about his new bitcoin price prediction in an interview with CNN Tuesday. Minerd is also the chairman of Guggenheim Investments, the global asset management and investment advisory division of Guggenheim Partners. As of Dec. 31, 2020, Guggenheim Investments had more than $246 billion in total assets across fixed income, equity, and alternative strategies. Minerd began by discussing the current monetary policy against the backdrop of more stimulus, bubbles in the stock market and other speculative assets, as well as the Gamestop saga...

The State Agency for Tax Administration of Spain published guidelines to reduce tax evasion for cryptocurrencies, such as bitcoin. The document is part of the general program of the so-called Annual Tax and Customs Control Plan. Spanish Tax Authorities Could Ask Local Exchanges for Customers Data According to the paper, the Spanish Treasury’s entity seeks to apply three measures, as the crypto markets’ hype generates “tax risks.” That’s why the agency expects to gather information as countermeasures against tax-related crimes. The watchdog is looking with the first measure to ask for information from the local crypto exchanges about digital asset holders. The document clarifies they’re pursuing such measures to incentivize the voluntary tax payments on crypto transactions. The second input made by the Treasury’s entity reads as follows: Systematization and analysis of the information obtained, in order to facilitate the actions to control the correct taxation of the operations c...

This week the former Digital Currency Group (DCG) Vice President of Investments, Travis Scher, announced a $72 million crypto-focused venture capital fund backed by the billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones and hip-hop star LL Cool J. The crypto VC fund was invoked by Scher, the private equity veteran Glenn Hutchins, and his son James Hutchins as well. On Thursday, February 4, 2021, a former DCG executive, Travis Scher tweeted about the new crypto-centric venture capital fund he started with two other partners. The crypto VC fund is managed by North Island Ventures partners Scher, Glenn Hutchins, and James Hutchins. The fund announcement explains that the new venture capital crypto fund initiated by North Island Ventures is backed by well known individuals. Investors in the fund include the rapper and hip hop star LL Cool J and also billionaire investor Paul Tudor Jones. Additionally, the announcement also mentions Twitter COO Anthony Noto and Pepsico CEO Indra Nooyi as investors....

While a number of digital currencies have seen price gains the two leading crypto assets, bitcoin and ethereum have seen transaction fees skyrocket. For instance, data shows that the median fee for a bitcoin transaction is $8.58, while the median fee is $9.35 when spending ether. Meanwhile, the average transaction fee for both networks has been much higher between $14 to over $20 per transfer. During the course of 2021, crypto assets have increased a great deal in value but alongside this, the fees to transact on these networks have risen as well. Bitcoin ( BTC ) and Ethereum ( ETH ) are the two largest blockchains, in terms of market capitalization. The two networks also take the cake when it comes to expensive transactions and this has been a complaint on social media and crypto-focused forums. At the time of writing, according to bitinfocharts.com data, the average transaction fee for bitcoin ( BTC ) is 0.00038 BTC or $14.25 USD per transfer . Of course, the median sized transac...

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Argo Blockchain said Wednesday that it bought 172.5 bitcoins in the second half of January as part of its asset management strategy. ● In a trading update , the London Stock Exchange-listed bitcoin miner also reported strong revenue growth during the review month, climbing 52% to £2.48 million ($3.37 million) from £1.63 million ($2.21 million) in December. ● Argo did not reveal how much it spent buying the reserve BTC , but bitcoin prices during the last half of January oscillated between $30,000 and $38,500. The company said it now holds the equivalent of 501 in bitcoin, as of the end of January. ● For the month in review, Argo Blockchain mined 93 bitcoins, down from 96 BTC in December. Mining output appears to have progressively declined at the London firm over the last few months. In November, Argo extracted 115 BTC , falling from 126 BTC mined in October. ● Peter Wall, chief executive officer of Argo, said: “I am thrilled that Argo has delivered our best month in the company...

In May 2020, McKinsey identified that both consumer and enterprise digital adoption had matured five years, in a matter of eight weeks. For financial institutions, digital technologies — including cloud-based models — offer the flexibility and scalability required to meet the demands of a more digitally advanced society. Throughout this accelerated shift to digital in … Continued The post RippleNet Is Now SOC 2 Certified appeared first on Ripple.

During the last few months, a few reports from mainstream media (MSM) outlets tried to prove that a large sum of bitcoin is controlled by a small group of people. Recently, Bloomberg claimed that “2% of accounts control 95% of all bitcoin,” a claim that doesn’t hold weight to onchain analysts. On Tuesday, Glassnode researcher Rafael Schultze-Kraft’s latest report refutes this claim by MSM, stressing that bitcoin ownership is not highly concentrated. Shrimps to Humpbacks: The Ocean of Bitcoin Entities Oftentimes MSM outlets and reporters publish a story about the cryptocurrency ecosystem without much research and knowledge concerning digital assets. More recently, after bitcoin ( BTC ) surpassed the crypto asset’s 2017 all-time high (ATH) and touched a new ATH in 2021, MSM reports concerning the digital currency’s ownership concentration have appeared. The reporters usually leverage the ‘Bitcoin Rich List’ stemming from the web portal Bitinfocharts , a page that shows BTC addresses...

Circle and the Stellar Development Foundation (SDF) announced that the second-biggest stablecoin is now available within their network. USD Coin (USDC) is accessible through five integrated wallets, and it can be tradeable on their ecosystem, said the USDC issuer. Stellar Has Been the Official Chain of USDC Since October 2020 Per the announcement , the stablecoin is available in any Stellar ( XLM ) account through Lobstr, Solar, Stellarport, Stellarx, and Stellarterm wallets. Moreover, people could trade USDC across an ecosystem that has over 9,000 assets. In October 2020, the SDF and the Centre Consortium — co-founded by Circle and crypto exchange Coinbase — announced Stellar as the official chain of USDC. Thanks to Circle Account and its API services, both businesses and developers can access Stellar USDC via one-single integration. With a Circle’s account, companies can attach their bank accounts to mint, redeem, store, send, and receive Stellar USDC. Jeremy Allaire, Circle’s...

Elon Musk has tweeted that dogecoin is people’s crypto shortly after the billionaire pledged to go off the social media platform for while. Incidentally, the token, which traded at $0.0411 on February 3, surged to $0.0588 just as Musk was tweeting. However, at the time of writing, the token appeared to have retreated to $0.0541, a price which is still 60% higher than that of February 3. Following Musk’s previous tweets about the token, dogecoin’s price surged to an all-time high (ATH) of $0.0791, according to Messari data. At the time of writing, the token is still up by more than 400% in the week while its market capitalization stands at $6.74 billion. Similarly, when Musk amended his Twitter account bio to include bitcoin, the crypto’s value surged by more than 20% in a few hours. Meanwhile, not everyone is impressed with the billionaire’s tweets that have ranged from pumping the dogecoin token to supporting Wallstreetbets traders. Some analysts have accused Musk of de...

According to a report, the South African Revenue Service (SARS) has sent out audit requests to taxpayers asking them to disclose their cryptocurrency trades and purchases. Taxpayers that fail to correctly disclose their income from bitcoin or other cryptocurrencies may be “liable to a fine or imprisonment for up to two years.” SARS Tracking Non-Compliant Taxpayers In the report , which is based on statements made by Tax Consulting South Africa, cryptocurrency traders are now required to state the purpose for purchasing the digital assets. In addition, crypto traders must submit a “letter from the trading platform(s) confirming the investments and the relevant trading schedules for the period and bank statements.” However, as Tax Consulting South Africa observes, this changed approach by SARS could spell trouble for taxpayers. According to the tax consulting firm, “it is no longer material whether the taxpayer concerned had justification for such non-disclosure or false statement ma...

PRESS RELEASE. February 4, 2021 – New York, New York – Sweet , in partnership with Bitcoin.com, has announced the launch of a highly-scalable Non-Fungible Token (NFT) platform for the broad distribution of digital collectibles and digital merchandise. Leveraging Simple Ledger Protocol (SLP) and the Bitcoin Cash network ( BCH ), blockchain digital collectibles provide consumer and entertainment brands with a previously-unseen opportunity to drive new revenue, create one-of-a-kind consumer experiences, and increase consumer engagement to unprecedented levels. Flexible Distribution With Sweet’s solution, brands have the flexibility to bring digital merchandise to market in an extraordinary number of ways, including for-purchase on existing e-commerce stores, bundled with physical products via QR codes, as social giveaways via web-based reservations, and as rewards for completing actions such as streaming a song on Spotify or Apple Music. The platform uses the Bitcoin Cash and the SLP...

Research by Bitflyer released today indicates the growing popularity of the cryptocurrency as an American household investment option. But not in Japan. Stocks Remain the #1 Investment Vehicle Bitflyer , a Japanese crypto exchange, released a research paper that dives into cryptocurrency sentiment and investment trends in the U.S. and compares them to the Japanese market. The most glaring difference between American and Japanese as far cryptocurrency acceptance is indicated through a simple question presented to survey participants: While 76% of Americans view cryptocurrencies positively, 78% of Japanese view cryptocurrencies negatively. The complete opposite pie charts demonstrate how the two markets are miles apart in their acceptance of cryptocurrencies. The research does not indicate when exactly the survey was done, but it can be assumed that the news-worthy ascend of bitcoin ( BTC ) in recent months has contributed to a heightened interest in cryptocurrencies as a whole in...